


and i'll be dead before the day is done

by MaryPSue



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Death Omens, F/M, Horror, Missing Scene, Sibling Incest, mentions of violence/gore, rated M FOR MURDER, seriously if you're here looking for sex you're going to be sorely disappointed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 02:43:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21402859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Edith Cushing was not the first to see something strange at Allerdale Hall.
Relationships: Lucille Sharpe/Thomas Sharpe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	and i'll be dead before the day is done

Afterwards, Lucille could not stop shaking.

Afterwards, while she stared, incomprehending, at the bloody mess in the bathtub and waited for her mother to sit up, to take a great rattling breath and start shrieking again about what monsters her children were – afterwards, while the blood still lay bright and almost cheerful on Lucille’s hands and all down her dress – afterwards, Thomas had pulled Lucille close and held her tightly. He was still a little shorter than she was, though Lucille saw clearly that this would not long be the case, and he was trembling almost as hard as she was.

But he was trying to comfort her, to reassure her, and in a way, this little show of bravery in the face of such obvious fear made Lucille feel steadier than she might have, had he been taller and stronger and more certain of himself. Then, she might have felt able to unmoor herself, to allow him to act as her anchor. But now, Lucille only stroked a hand over her brother’s dark curls, humming a few bars of lullaby, and felt the quaking inside her slowly still.

“What shall we do?” Thomas whispered into her shoulder, at last, and Lucille paused in her humming long enough to think.

“You were never here,” she said, slowly, gathering her thoughts.

Thomas drew back, looking at her with horror, but the more the words spilled from her lips the more Lucille felt the rightness of them. She had taken so many beatings to protect him, so delicate, so innocent, so perfect. What would this be but one beating more? “No, Thomas, listen. You were not even meant to be here. The servants have not yet arrived, no one need know you returned early.”

Lucille was suddenly aware of the blood drying stickily on her hands, and rubbed them uselessly against her equally-stained skirts. Thomas looked as though he would protest, but Lucille could already hear shifting and settling downstairs, the creak of doors opening and shutting, the reluctant sighs of the sinking house beneath treading feet. “Go. Quickly. Get yourself cleaned up, wash away the blood.”

“Lucille -” Thomas started, and then bit off his own words. His face was very pale, so pale that the blot of red her dress had smeared off onto his cheek stood out stark as death.

“Go,” Lucille said, shoving him away from her. It pained her – she wanted nothing more than to go on holding him close, humming to him, keeping him safe. But now, the best way she could protect him would be to take the blame. “Go! Before they come upstairs.”

At last, Thomas went. He paused a long moment in the doorway, looking back at Lucille and their mother, with a look of longing and fear in his pale eyes that Lucille felt certain was a mirror of her own.

But in the end, he disappeared into the hall. Lucille, left alone with her mother, stood perfectly still until she heard the servants coming. Then she was obliged to get up and take the cleaver that had at the last been such a good friend to her, and to secret it in the basement, for safekeeping, should she ever have want of it again.

She could not name the emotion that overtook her, that puppeteered her limbs, that sealed the tears back behind her eyes, unable to fall. Shock, perhaps. Grief, certainly – had she not just lost her mother?

But if Lucille were to be honest – and if there was one thing Lucille was, it was honest – the overriding feeling was of relief.

And not a little bit of triumph.

…

It was years before Lucille saw Thomas or Allerdale Hall again. At the institution, they told her that Thomas had been sent off to school. Lucille had kept that close to her heart, throughout the years she languished alone far from home. Thomas at least had escaped. He was protected now from their mother’s sly malice, their father’s cruel temper, the decaying halls of their home. He was free, he was safe, and Lucille had made that so. That was one thing that not even the institution could take away.

Thomas was a man grown – as Lucille was now a woman - before he had Lucille withdrawn from the institution. Before he summoned her home.

He was just as she had imagined him, and yet still a shock to lay eyes upon. Somehow, Lucille had been expecting the boy she had left, not the fine, handsome young man Thomas had grown to become. He was like a stranger, one with eyes Lucille knew as well as her own.

He would not touch her, at first.

Beyond one brief embrace when he’d welcomed Lucille home to Allerdale, Thomas had held back. He had always been an affectionate child, and Lucille felt keenly the gap that seemed to have opened between them, even as the disparity in their heights had closed. The strain that lay around Thomas’ eyes each time he looked upon her, the care with which he chose the few words he spoke to her, the time he spent up in the attic or out on the grounds with that damn invention of his all seemed to speak of deep shame, deep regret.

Lucille wondered, from time to time, whether Thomas did not wish he had never withdrawn her from the institution. The brother who had once clung to her skirts now made excuses not to so much as brush her hand with his own.

Lucille wondered if he, too, could not forget that the last time they had spoken, those hands had been red with their mother’s blood.

She was cruel with the remaining servants, in petty, sneaking, smiling ways, in some misplaced idea of retaliation. Or perhaps only because, unlike Thomas, the gazes they regarded her with spoke only of hatred and fear. And because – because it felt _wrong_, somehow, for them all to be here, watching and whispering amongst themselves, their footsteps and their gossip filling up the halls of _her_ home. Disrespectful.

They had forced her out once. Lucille would see to it that they did not do so again.

…

Thomas came to her after the third housemaid had fled Allerdale – in terror or in tears, Lucille did not particularly care. He had found her in the attic, behind the nursery, in the room that had belonged to the nanny until she was sent away and the governess came to take her place. Lucille and Thomas had sometimes been allowed to curl up in that bed, one on either side of nanny’s solid, reassuring warmth, if they were frightened in the night. The governess had never permitted such childishness.

“Lucille,” Thomas said, sounding quite distracted, “you must stop driving off the servants.”

Lucille turned at last to look at him, surfacing from beneath the strata of the past. “Why?”

Thomas gaped at her, for a moment lost for words, and Lucille wondered, in that moment, if he truly thought her mad.

“Why should I?” Lucille repeated, rising from the bed. “It’s our house.”

There was fury in Thomas’ voice, fury carefully suppressed. “And once they are all gone, who do you think will do the wash, cook the meals, lay the fires -”

“You forget,” Lucille interrupted sharply, “that I tended to Mother for years. And I was only a child then. I am a woman now, and quite capable of managing this house for just the two of us.”

Thomas looked directly at her only briefly, before he turned his eyes away, as though the sight of her pained him. Lucille knew the scratch across her face had healed well, but still, she had to wonder if he saw anything but the pale scars marring her forehead and upper lip. They had been a last gift from their mother, the brand of a murderer, a dying woman’s last curse.

_You’re monsters. Both of you._

“We can’t,” Thomas said, his gaze still turned away, and his voice was strained, hoarse. “I cannot be here, alone, with you.”

Lucille struck him across the face.

Thomas barely flinched, standing with his face turned aside, his mouth slightly open as he drew a ragged breath. The mark of Lucille’s hand was already rising, red and angry, across his pale cheek, and for a moment Lucille thought of a splotch of blood that had once rested there.

“Why did you bring me here?” she demanded, when Thomas still failed to respond. “Why did you not leave me to rot? Why bring your mad, murderous sister back to this place, if it shames you so simply to look upon her?”

At last, at last, Thomas raised his head. He met Lucille’s gaze from under his lashes and held it, without turning away, without making some excuse and running from her, as he had done since she arrived. Lucille felt – pinned down, somehow, by something in that gaze. Pinned, and seen, studied and catalogued and _known_. Like a butterfly under glass.

It made her shiver, all the way down to her toes.

“Lucille,” Thomas said.

Just the one word. Just her name.

…

Afterwards, when they lay together on sheets that likely had not been changed since the governess left, spent and sticky with sweat and choking on the clouds of dust they had raised, Lucille could not say which of them had stepped forward first, which of them had started what. She knew only that Thomas, _her_ Thomas, was here with her once more, curled up beside her as he had so many years ago, a reassuring, solid warmth. That he was not afraid, and not ashamed. Not of her.

When Thomas woke, bleary with sleep and satisfaction, Lucille had kissed him on the forehead and stroked his hair just as she had done when they were younger. “Send the servants away,” she whispered.

“It would spare us an expense,” Thomas said, and, abruptly, smiled.

Lucille drank in the sight of that smile, basking in it like a cat in the sunlight that breaks through the clouds.

But, like the sunlight that breaks through the clouds, Thomas’ smile did not last long.

“There will be talk,” he said, after a moment.

Lucille hummed tunelessly, and pulled his head into her lap.

“We’ll put it around,” she said, at last, “that the house is haunted.”

When she looked down, Thomas’ expression was troubled, and Lucille smiled as though she could wipe the concern from his eyes as easily as she had when they were children.

“No one would _want_ to work for us. It would not seem so strange,” she said. “Poor folk are often superstitious. And there has been a violent death within these walls.”

Thomas still looked unconvinced, so Lucille leaned closer.

“And,” she whispered, into the shell of his ear, her unbound hair draping down and over his bare shoulder like a dark curtain drawn between them and the world, “it would account for all the unearthly moaning.”

That drew an actual burst of surprised laughter from Thomas, and Lucille smiled triumphantly, carding her fingers through his dark hair, so like her own.

…

She wore his ring.

They had the run of the house now, as they had never had when they were young, and they spent afternoons playing hide-and-go-seek in the endless maze of rooms, laughing and chasing each other up and down the flights of stairs as though they were children again. Thomas slid all the way from attic to first floor on the great heavy polished stair banister, leaping gracefully down before hitting the newel posts, and Lucille felt as though her heart would overflow at the plain and simple joy in his voice when he reached the bottom and called up to her to follow him.

The vast emptiness of the house seemed to throw their laughter back at them with mocking echoes, until the house itself seemed to be laughing at them. When Thomas noticed it had made Lucille quieter, he would delight her again with toys and trinkets made just for her, just as he used to. Some she could not guess the purpose of, and he was obliged to demonstrate. A fascinating contraption of leather belts and carefully-turned wood, polished to a satin finish, proved a favourite for them both.

Together, they perused the more scandalous and profane of Father’s books, and tried to put to use what they found there, to varying degrees of success. Once, Lucille went to her knees before Thomas on the hearth of the library, in full view of their mother’s portrait, where she could raise her eyes, not to the hills, but to her mother’s stern gaze. The hard floor left Lucille’s knees aching for days afterwards, but it was worth it to imagine what Lady Beatrice Sharpe would say if she could see them now.

Lucille rather hoped she could.

Some nights, Thomas woke sweating, or shouting. He would not tell Lucille of his nightmares, though he would always crawl into her lap afterwards, as he had when they were children, and let her softly sing him back to sleep. Whatever terrors he suffered, he kept strictly to himself.

Sometimes, though, he spoke in his sleep.

Lucille had half-expected to hear him begging, pleading with their father, their mother. She suffered such dreams too. But from Thomas’ dreaming cries, Lucille gathered, also, that school had not always been kind, especially to country boys with dissolute fathers, little fortune, and suspected murderers in their families.

She should not have felt the flicker of vindication she did at that. The school had not given her brother the care he needed and deserved. He should have had better. He should have been _protected_.

But whenever Thomas woke, shaking, Lucille was there to comfort and pet him and sing him back to sleep. And she could not help but be grateful that the school had never, _could_ never have, taken her place.

For a time, Lucille let herself believe, they were happy.

…

Even sending the servants away could only defray the costs of living at Allerdale Hall for so long, though. And little by little, the joy drained from Thomas’ laughter, the smile from his eyes.

“We must stop,” he said, one afternoon, when even Lucille’s touches had failed to rouse him from his dark mood. “You could still make a good match – find a man who could take care of you. I – I could perhaps manage here, if it were only myself.”

Lucille looked at him, the brother she’d never wanted anything but to protect, and felt a swell of black rage rising in her throat.

“Never,” she spat, surprising them both with her venom. “You forget, Thomas, you brought me back. I won’t be sent away again.”

But Thomas had only stared back at her, something steely in his gaze that, Lucille discovered, to her surprise and unease, she did not recognise. “And will you eat clay, Lucille? Will you scavenge the fields like a beggar? We have no money.”

Lucille stared at her brother – this cold porcelain doll that had taken her brother’s place.

“Sell Mother’s jewelry,” she said, distantly, a little surprised at herself. “Sell Father’s books – sell the furniture, if you must. I won’t leave Allerdale. I won’t leave you.”

At last, something in Thomas’ eyes seemed to soften, and he opened his arms, drew Lucille into his lap and let her curl against him. He stroked a hand softly over her hair, as she used to do to him, and his voice was gentle as he said, “All of Mother’s jewelry is sold, save the ring – I know you won’t give it up. Father’s library only has value to the right collector, and to find them would, I fear, prove difficult. The furniture has about as much value as the dress you wear.” Thomas’ caressing hand moved lower, long strokes over Lucille’s back. She wondered if he could feel the scars through the taffeta of her dress. “And my invention is nowhere near to finished. Without it, the mines are worthless.”

He drew back a little, holding Lucille at arm’s length, so that he could look her in the eye. “We will starve soon, Lucille, if something is not done.”

And Lucille, studying her brother’s familiar face with its strange expression, knew with a feeling like swallowing a lump of freezing lead that it was true.

…

It was Thomas’ idea, at the first.

Well. Thomas’ _first_ idea was to present his invention before possible investors, to see if he could not ensnare more capital with which to get the thing built to scale and running correctly if he cast a wider net. He had drawn from their dwindling savings to travel to London, assuring Lucille that by the time he returned, he would be able to pay it back and more.

Despite Lucille’s protests, despite Thomas’ own reluctance, in the end they decided it would not be prudent for the both of them to go. Even the Sharpe name was not worth much, these days. And even Lucille had to admit that she did not relish the prospect of going amongst society again after so many years, of leaving the familiar protection of Allerdale’s halls.

Lucille had kissed Thomas, and waved him goodbye, and then settled down to wait out his absence amongst the echoes and lengthening shadows of Allerdale Hall. She steadied her nerves with the assurance that Thomas would not be long, that he would be back with her soon. That he would have secured funding that would mean, if he had to travel again, he need not do so without her. The quiet of the house was oppressive without him, broken only by the horrible groans of the pipes and the sighs and moans of the wind, and the emptiness of all the hallways seemed somehow watchful, somehow hungry, but soon Thomas would return. Soon, Thomas would return, and then all would be right again.

But the days had worn on, turning to weeks, and Thomas did not return.

…

The telegram had arrived just as Lucille was beginning to panic.

It was short, to the point, but still she was a little shocked that Thomas would have undertaken the expense. For a moment, Lucille even feared the worst – that Thomas had fallen ill. That somewhere far from home, alone, Thomas was dying.

She wasted no time in joining him in London. The press of people, the sheer constant jostling noise and _stink_ of it all, put Lucille’s teeth on edge. She longed for home, for the quiet of the library and the gentle notes of the piano, for the freedom of movement the vast halls afforded her, for the knowledge that for miles around, there was no other living soul. But she was here for a reason, and she would not return to Allerdale alone.

She found Thomas’ hotel with some small difficulty, made her way to his suite and knocked.

Thomas answered the door, his eyes contrite and fixed on the floor. He ushered Lucille inside, shutting the door behind him and leaning heavily against it, as though a great weight rested upon his shoulders. Lucille raised a hand to press against his cheek, but he brushed it roughly aside, turning his face from her.

“Whatever is the matter?” Lucille demanded, drawing closer, pressing herself against him. It was shameless, even a little desperate, but in that moment, that was no more than she felt. “Thomas? Why did you summon me so urgently?”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas said, without preamble, turning his eyes up to Lucille’s face.

Lucille took a step back.

“I had little choice. None of the investors wished to have anything to do with the mine, but -”

“Little choice in _what_? Thomas, you’re frightening me.”

“Forgive me,” Thomas said, closing the distance between them and clasping both Lucille’s hands in his own. His eyes dug into her as they ever had, as though he could look right through her own eyes and see her thoughts spilled out on the inside of her skull. “Pamela’s father is both rich and indulgent. She is his only child, and the apple of his eye, and they are both quite taken with the idea of marrying into a title - ”

“Marrying into?” Lucille spat, the words sour on her tongue. “_Thomas_.” She tore her hands free, turning her own face away. She could not bear, now, to look her brother in the eye, to listen to him explain with terrible calmness how he had given himself to another woman. She would be sick. She would take the nearest heavy thing and throw it. She would smash his face in. “You - What have you done?”

Thomas sighed heavily. “I knew you’d be angry. But – please, Lucille, consider it. She is sickly. The marriage cannot last long. And our wedding presents alone will keep bread in our mouths and my invention’s cogs turning for at least another year.”

“Let another woman have you?” Lucille gasped, feeling her eyes growing hot with a flush of sudden shame. “Let another woman share our home? Share your bed? Am I nothing to you?”

“Everything,” Thomas said, shortly, his voice dark and full of wanting, his eyes on Lucille clear and intense. “Lucille, you have always been everything.”

He reached up, to gently raise her chin with one hand, his fingers hot as brands on her bare skin. “You must know it is for you that I would do this. This trip was our last hope. We have nothing left of value, save Allerdale Hall itself. If I do not do this, if I do not marry Pamela…we may be forced to sell.”

“No,” Lucille gasped, feeling rather like a hand had just closed around her lungs, squeezing the air out of them entirely. “No, you never -”

“I kept it from you. I didn’t want you to worry. But now…”

Lucille said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say.

“Lucille?” Thomas asked.

“Don’t touch me,” Lucille said, and meant it. “And Thomas – don’t touch her. Lay a finger on her and I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

“No one else,” Thomas agreed, softly, his eyes moving over her face as though committing it to memory. “No one else but you.”

…

He proposed to Pamela Upton with Lucille’s ring, and, within a week, she was Lady Pamela Sharpe and they were all back on their way to Crimson Peak.

…

Pamela was the kind of plain that indicated she was from good, hardy English peasant stock. Her father had made his fortune in canneries, and was most impressed to have bagged a baronet for his daughter when the clubs in London still turned up their noses at his applications.

Still, Pamela had an almost attractive, romantic pallor and slenderness, clearly the product of illness. Because Thomas had not exaggerated when he said she was sickly; if anything, he had understated. Pamela was confined to a chair.

Lucille could see at once that she was a poor match for Thomas. They had little in common – Pamela had no siblings, and had grown up in a bright, clean townhouse in London, playing in the streets with other children before she had taken ill. She did not seem to share or understand Thomas’ interest in machinery, and she quickly grew bored with watching him work.

“Why do you waste so much time amongst these toys and trinkets?” she had asked him, once, and perhaps only Lucille knew Thomas well enough to see the way that, under his steady expression, his hands clenched into fists. “Surely you would not while away your entire honeymoon with automatons, while your living wife is right before you?”

The way she said it suggested a jest, but the anxiety in her face spoke otherwise.

There was one contraption (apart from the notoriously unreliable elevator, in which she once became trapped for nearly an hour before Lucille and Thomas missed her and were able to recall the car) which Pamela did seem to appreciate. She had brought a portable gramophone player/recorder with her from London, an extravagant gift from Thomas. Lucille had had sharp words with him about the expense, after what he had told her about the hall, but Thomas had only smiled helplessly and shrugged his shoulders.

“She has the money,” he said. “And it made her happy, which makes her father happy, which keeps bread on our table and clothes on our backs. Besides, the gramophone is interesting. I should like to take it apart and see how it works.” He had taken one of Lucille’s hands in his own, kissing it without taking his eyes from hers. It was somehow almost as thrilling as anything he’d ever done to her when they were not wearing half so many clothes, and for the first time, Lucille began to appreciate the possibilities of having someone else there at the house. “I could buy you a gift, as well. Perhaps some new dresses. Think. What’s the one thing you’d like most in the world?”

_I’d like you to myself again_, Lucille thought, suddenly sad, and had to turn away.

…

The roof collapsed a few days after Thomas swept Pamela over the threshold, Lucille wheeling the chair behind them. And it was then that Lucille really began to despise her brother’s wife.

Pamela complained constantly – of the cold, of the unreliable elevator, of the damp, of the clay. Of the debris in the main hall which made it difficult for her to get to the front door, the steps which made it difficult for her to get out. She hated Allerdale’s many twisting halls, finding them not only difficult to navigate, but also ugly, outmoded, and ominous. She felt lonely, and was forever tracking Thomas down to try to coax him into some lover’s game she felt they ought to play.

She did not seem to understand the game in which she had actually become a pawn – the game of so many brides these days, the game of her father’s ambition and money and many of the gentry’s slow decline into reduced circumstances. She did not seem to understand that she was, in fact, a pawn and not a queen. That she had no right to this place or to the title she bore or to Thomas’ love or even to the ring on her finger.

And then she caught cold, which seemed to affect her worse than anyone else in the household, and Lucille found herself once again nursing a woman in her mother’s bed.

The nightmares returned – nonsense images, of suffocating slowly in a box under the ground, of Pamela changing in front of Lucille’s eyes into Lady Beatrice, of being trapped in this house playing nursemaid forever. Lucille woke in blind panics, reaching out for Thomas – only to remember that he was not there, that he would never again be there.

She began to hope, quietly, that Pamela Upton – Lucille could not quite bear to think of her as _Lady Pamela Sharpe_ – would simply die.

…

But Pamela did not die. She weathered the sickness, as she did two others.

For all her outward frailty, Pamela had demonstrated a certain quiet strength of spirit, a determination to continue in the face of all the odds; put plainly, a stubborn refusal to lay down and die. Despite herself, Lucille could not help but feel a grudging respect.

That respect, however, by no means softened her resolve.

She caught Thomas one evening, in the attic, in his workshop, while Pamela was still in bed recovering from her last bout with illness. They had sent for a doctor from town, who had only told them that Pamela was on the mend and that she needed to rest. The fee had been enough to make Thomas bite his lower lip, but he had said nothing to Lucille.

He tried, again, to turn Lucille away when she came to the workshop, but it took very little time for her to persuade him to let her stay, to hear her out.

“You married her for her fortune, Thomas,” she breathed into his ear, as she pinned him back against his workbench, delicately undoing his trousers with one hand even as useless, stuttering protests died on his tongue. “But she will be the ruin of us. Something must be done.”

“And what would you propose?” Thomas said, a little breathless, and then bit back a curse as Lucille drew back to look him in the eye. She could not entirely contain the smile that threatened to break through her carefully schooled expression, and Thomas’ eyes sank closed. “_Lucille_. No. We must have no more bloodshed. After Mother – the townsfolk – we are no longer children, Lucille, it would mean prison, or _death _-”

“Then we need not shed her blood,” Lucille argued, pressing forward again, her whole body against his, so she could feel his chest rise and fall beneath her, so hot, so alive. “She’s sickly. And you’re clever. Think of something.”

Thomas’ gasp was a choked cry, just one word, just her name. “_Lucille -_”

“I cannot live like this any longer,” Lucille whispered, into the bared flesh of Thomas’ neck, as her hand worked busily below. “_Do_ something about her. Or I will.”

…

The next day, Thomas went out for the post, leaving Lucille and Pamela alone. Lucille thought she understood him, but as she kissed him farewell sweetly and chastely on the cheek, he gripped her arm above the elbow rather too tight and hissed into her ear, “_Wait_ until I return.”

He took a step back, giving Lucille a smile that did not meet his eyes, and, teasingly, said, “Be good.” The jovial tone in his voice barely covered an undercurrent of intensity, almost anger, which was clear in his eyes. Lucille shivered down to her toes.

Then he kissed Pamela, which Lucille could not watch, giving her some bland reassurance, and was gone.

Lucille made some quick excuse, some household task she needed to attend to, and fled to the library. It was not long, though, before the sound of a short scream roused her.

For a moment, she allowed herself the fanciful thought that Pamela had met some genuine accident, that there would be no need of whatever Thomas was planning. But when Lucille made her way back to the main hall, Pamela was not dead, merely pale as a ghost and sitting shaking in her chair, her face upturned to the rotted-out ceiling.

“A bird,” she babbled, when Lucille drew up beside her. “A great black bird – it must have gotten in when Thomas opened the doors, it swooped quite low near my face and then up through the hole in the roof -”

“You _have_ had a fright,” Lucille said, perhaps a little too coldly, because Pamela gave her a strange look.

“Do you not know what that means? A bird in the house?” Her trembling voice went flat and dark. “It is an omen of death.”

Lucille looked up, towards the patch of dull grey sky visible through the shattered timbers of the roof.

“Superstition,” she said. “I do not doubt we shall have a whole family of robins roosting there come spring, coming and going through the house as they please. I hope they will not herald the death of a member of the household each time, or we shall soon run out.” She looked down, sharply. “Would you like another blanket? You seem chilled. It cannot be good for you to be out here in the weather, so soon after your last illness.”

Pamela still looked very pale, but her hands were steady as she moved them to the wheels of her chair. “Yes, perhaps. And – maybe a cup of tea?”

“Of course,” Lucille said, sweeping out of the hall.

…

Thomas returned with the post, and with two tins of tea.

…

Poison, Lucille had discovered, was quite as satisfying to watch work as a heavy blade, if much slower. Watching Pamela waste to nothing had been almost as gratifying as sinking the cleaver into Lady Beatrice Sharpe’s head; even, it must be said, with its own special charm, that Pamela had depended so heavily upon Lucille at the end.

Lucille had once observed that Pamela seemed to possess a great and silent strength of spirit. She now enjoyed watching that spirit slowly break under the onslaught of the poison. It had been like playing nursemaid to her mother again. Lucille found that, now that an end lay in sight, she rather liked having something helpless dependent upon her.

…

Pamela tried to get away, once, toward the end. It was quite horrible to behold, her poor wasted little form slumped in the chair with its wheels all mired in the red clay earth, no strength left to give them one more turn. Lucille still is not certain how she made it down the stairs by the door.

She and Thomas had brought Pamela back inside, shutting the door behind her – for, Lucille thought with a stab of fierce joy, the last time.

Lucille had bathed Pamela, brushed her hair, dressed her in her nightclothes, while Thomas took the chair up to the nursery. Lucille also took back her ring. And if she kept a little souvenir, honoured an outdated Victorian mourning tradition and took a little something to remember Pamela by, well, Thomas need never know.

Then they had put Pamela to bed.

Lucille had taken very, very good care of her.

…

When Thomas was finished with it, had taken it to pieces and put it back together again, they stashed the gramophone in the basement, down by the clay vats, with the rest of Pamela’s things. Though both Lucille and Thomas looked, they could not find the wax cylinders Pamela had recorded.

It mattered little, anyway.

…

They did not speak of marriage for a long time after that.

But Thomas’ invention ate money like a voracious beast. It took years, but at last Pamela’s money ran low, then out. They did not dare catch her father’s attention by writing to request more – Lucille was not certain of her ability to imitate Pamela’s hand, and surely after all this time, the old man would wonder why he had not heard from his daughter for so long, except to beg for money.

The invention was nearly finished, Thomas said. A few more custom parts would get it working. He was sure of it.

Lucille reminded him of the last three times he’d said just that, and he’d wilted.

Neither of them ever raised the matter, not really. They spoke of the need to raise additional capital, of meeting more investors, of taking another trip. A little farther afield, perhaps. Somewhere they would not be likely to encounter anyone who had known of Pamela Upton.

They settled on Edinburgh. Lucille packed the best of the dresses she had cut down for herself from her mother’s closet. Thomas debated for hours over which cravats to bring.

And when, at a fashionable ball hosted by one of their prospective investors, they were introduced to Margaret McDermott, they had exchanged a glance and had each known the other’s thought:

_This time, no mistakes._

…

The night after Thomas proposed to Margaret, back in the suite at the hotel, they celebrated with unusually somber champagne. Lucille still missed the feeling of the ring around her finger, but – knowing that there was an end in sight made it easier to bear.

Easier, too, to have a secret with Thomas once more, rather than being shut out from the beginning. They two, together, alone against the vast, ponderous, idiotic, unsuspecting world.

Still –

“If we truly mean to do this,” Lucille said, catching Thomas’ face in her hands, so that he could not turn away from her, “I need you to promise me something. Three somethings.”

“Anything,” Thomas said, his eyes sparkling like the champagne itself.

“You won’t lay a hand on them. Any of them. You touch no one else the way you touch me.”

Thomas shook his head in agreement, solemn as a church.

Emboldened, Lucille went on. “You always get back my ring.”

“Of course. It’s ours.”

“And,” Lucille said, her forehead nearly pressed against Thomas’ now, “you must promise me one final thing.”

Thomas’ broad hands came up to cover Lucille’s, so warm, so solid. “Whatever you desire.”

Lucille was still for a moment, listening to their breathing intermingled. The hotel suite was too quiet, no flutter of moths, no rattle of pipes, no sigh and moan of wind in old chimneys. She could swear she could hear Thomas’ heart beating steadily in his chest.

He had not escaped untouched, she knew, swiftly and suddenly. He had not been protected from any of the Sharpes’ cruelty, their wickedness. He had not escaped Allerdale.

Because she had not let him. And, Lucille knew, in that moment, that she never would.

“You must promise me that you will not fall in love with any of them.”

There was a moment, heavy between them, when, though neither of them moved, Lucille fancied she could feel Thomas drawing away from her. She wanted to grab at him, pull him close, hold him so tightly he could never get free – but then he enfolded her in his arms, and Lucille felt the panic ebb.

“Never,” Thomas whispered, into her hair. “I promise.”

…

Margaret shuddered when Thomas swept her across the threshold of Allerdale Hall, staring up and further up towards the hole in the roof, and then down at the floorboards, which seeped red clay onto her fine new boots. “What a horrid place! Where have you brought me, a ruin?”

“It’s home,” Thomas had said, in a low voice that Lucille knew of old was his way of trying to hide a hurt. “Your home, now, too.”

Lucille suspected the smile she wore must resemble that of a skull.

“It’s been a long, cold journey,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Shall I put on some tea?”

…

Margaret McDermott – Lucille could not bring herself to think of the woman as _Lady Sharpe_ any more than she had Pamela – was unbearable. There seemed to be no malice in it, only a vast and good-natured ignorance, and yet, somehow, that was almost worse.

She could neither understand nor abide the lack of servants, and treated Lucille rather like a lady’s-maid. She wanted to air the place out, and fix the floor in the ballroom, and host parties. She thought Thomas must be _bored_ working on his models and mechanicals all day, as she was _bored_ out here in the countryside, and she was forever pestering Thomas to take her to places where there were, in her words, “noise and light and life, not like this old mausoleum – I half feel like I’ve been buried alive!”

And then that great braying cackle would echo through the halls, Margaret laughing at her own joke, and Lucille would feel, again, sharply, as though the house itself mocked her.

Margaret herself seemed full of “noise and light and life”, thrice again as bright and colourful and vigourous as either Thomas or Lucille, who seemed but lonely ghosts wandering the halls of their own home in comparison. She filled every space, dominated every conversation, with an aggressive good cheer that made Lucille grind her back teeth together and think fondly on her hidden cleaver.

Poison hardly seemed to diminish her.

…

There was only one occasion on which Lucille could recall Margaret being unusually subdued, near the end. She’d been spooked by something she’d come across while walking down in the valley, below the house.

“It was sittin’ on a stone down there by the stream, knockin’ a dress against the rocks,” she was saying, anxiously, urgently, to Thomas when Lucille brought up the tea tray. Margaret broke off mid-sentence, and she and Thomas both turned to look at Lucille, who raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“Someone from the village,” Thomas said, reassuringly, gently taking Margaret’s hand – adorned with Lucille’s ring – in his and looking deep into her eyes. Lucille had to look abruptly away or risk being sick. “Maybe one of the workmen’s wives?”

Margaret shook her head furiously, pushing Thomas’ hand away. “You’ve never seen such a thing. Like no woman on earth. And it was singin’. Like a woman keenin’.” Her rough country brogue, Lucille noticed, seemed to have thickened in her distress.

“Your eyes must have played tricks on you,” Lucille said, giving Margaret her best smile as she laid out the tea things and poured a cup, passing it to her. “It does grow dark early, down in the valley. And you have been very tired lately. Did you stop for a rest? Might you have slept, and the whole thing been a dream?”

Margaret shook her head again, pushing the cup of tea back at Lucille, but she seemed a little less certain. “I was awake, I’m tellin’ you. I’ve only heard a voice like that at funerals. Sure enough it was the _nigheag_, lamentin’ and washin’ out a bloodied dress.” Her voice faltered. “_My _dress. I’m marked to die.”

Lucille had to turn her face away, so that Margaret would not see her smile. “Don’t be silly. No one’s going to die. Now drink your tea.” 

…

In the end, of course, Margaret fought. Lucille was obliged to use the axe.

…

Thomas had said nothing, when he had returned with the post and seen what Lucille had done, only gone awfully white and thin-lipped and grim. He’d helped Lucille haul the body down to the clay vats, helped her scrub the blood and bits of brain and fragments of skull out of the floorboards, helped her find Margaret’s ring finger where it had rolled under the hatstand by the door. He had said nothing as Lucille triumphantly took back the ring, _her_ ring, the one _Margaret_ should never have been allowed to wear.

But Thomas had turned his face away when she tried to kiss him, so that her lips only grazed the corner of his frown.

Lucille did not tell him of the trophy she’d kept, and yet, still, he seemed somehow to know. And to disapprove.

But in the end, they lay together, in the bed where Lucille had nursed their mother’s broken leg, the bed where Thomas had slept only once with his two wives and never touched either of them. Thomas brushed the hair back from Lucille’s face and pressed the softest of kisses against the scar on her forehead, then the scar on her lip, and Lucille knew that all was forgiven.

…

By the time they claimed Enola Sciotti, Lucille and Thomas had developed a system. They worked seamlessly together, a team. And despite the fact that another woman wore _her_ ring, another woman bore _his_ name, Lucille found she felt closer to Thomas than she ever had before.

And then she had nearly ruined it all.

The lovely thing about poison was that it gave a woman time to transfer all her assets, to request money, to write up a store of letters and money transfer instructions that Lucille and Thomas could parcel out to friends and family – and lawyers – left behind long after the woman herself had ceased to impose her presence on Allerdale Hall. The lovely thing about poison was that it drew out the moment of triumph, allowed Lucille time to savour her mouthful of blood.

The trouble with poison was that it gave a woman time to worry, to think, to discover. Gave a woman time to beg.

Enola was bright. Lucille had to allow her that much. She was much quicker on the uptake than poor Pamela, a much better student of people than Margaret. There was a kindness in her, laid alongside a certain sharpness that Lucille had wondered about and would regret never fully sounding out.

She had known at once about Lucille’s…delicate condition, and had treated it with equal delicacy. She had caught Lucille alone early one morning as Lucille was laying the fire in the kitchen and offered her help. She knew herbs, Enola said, and something of medicine. It could be done and over with before even Thomas had to know.

It was the closest Lucille had ever come to telling one of them everything.

Of course, she had refused Enola’s offer. Lucille had already made up her mind to keep the child, no matter what Thomas might think. But Enola had also offered her help in other ways, to make sure the baby was born strong and healthy, that Lucille herself survived.

For the first time since nanny had left, someone had cared for Lucille the way she cared for others. Enola had rubbed her back when it ached, with strong-smelling, oily concoctions that somehow eased the ache away. Enola had taken over tending to the fires and the floors as it had become more difficult for Lucille to stoop. Enola had watched and insisted Lucille sit if she started to become tired, had taken over whatever tasks Lucille had had to abandon, had joined her and sat with her, read to her and rubbed her swollen ankles.

Enola, Lucille was shocked to later realise, had made herself something like a friend.

…

On her own, Enola might have been endurable. But she did not come on her own.

Along with Enola had come a small dog, which despised Lucille and which Lucille despised in turn. When they had all arrived back at Allerdale for the first time (and last, though Enola could not know), the dog had sat down outside the doors and growled, its lips curled back over a mouthful of small sharp teeth, its ears laid back flat against its head. It had refused to cross the threshold until Enola spoke quite sharply to it, and then, it had slunk close to her legs with its eyes wide and rolling and its tail between its legs.

Lucille had been carrying up two of Enola’s hatboxes when she tripped, unexpectedly, over something by the mouth of the hallway by the master bedroom, the hallway that led to the wing with the quite ostentatious Gothic arches. She and Thomas had used to dare each other to run down that hall, as though the spikes from the ceiling might fall and impale them. Lucille had managed to keep her balance, but for one harrowing moment she had been convinced she would break her neck.

The dog, sitting staring down the hall, apparently none the worse for being tripped over, turned to Lucille and growled. She had aimed a vicious, secretive kick at it, but missed when it suddenly whined and went running for its mistress.

“You must bring that animal to heel,” Lucille had said shortly, to Enola, as she dropped both hatboxes on the bed. One fell on its side, the lid toppling off to allow a large, veiled hat to roll out onto the bedclothes. “I cannot work with it underfoot like this.”

Enola had not spoken, only staring at the hatbox as though what had spilled forth had been not a hat, but a severed head.

“Of course,” she said, faintly, reaching to her reticule and patting her pockets. A moment later, Thomas reached into his own pocket and drew forth a red India rubber ball, a favourite toy of the dog’s, if Lucille was not mistaken. Enola took it from him with a grateful smile and a kiss, and Lucille turned her face away, only to see the dog staring up at her from Enola’s feet. Its small dark eyes seemed somehow accusing, and Lucille felt a sudden urge to defend herself.

Which was ridiculous. It was a dog. How could it possibly know what Lucille had done?

…

Despite Enola’s direct instructions, Lucille took care to allow the dog to slip outside at every opportunity. However, to her dismay, the wretched beast was as devoted as it was stupid, and it would not run away, or be crushed in Thomas’ increasingly intricate web of machinery. It kept returning, to get in under Lucille’s feet and yap and growl loudly at thin air.

Enola approached Lucille on one such afternoon, her mouth downturned in a thoughtful frown. She didn’t look angry so much as unsettled, and perhaps that was why Lucille, rather than teasing her, answered her enquiry honestly. “Did you let my dog out?”

“I did,” Lucille answered, turning toward the stove and the pot boiling there. Stew, thick and nourishing. Enola had begun to suspect the tea. “The poor thing was nearly howling at the door. I thought it prudent not to allow it to do its business in the hall.”

She waited a moment for the coughing fit that racked Enola to pass.

“Do you know that other dog?” Enola asked, at last, once the choked, gasping wheeze that made Lucille feel ill just to listen to had subsided. Her voice sounded strained, though whether because of the question or simply from the effort of holding back more coughs, Lucille could not tell.

Lucille paused, with her hand on the spoon’s handle.

“Other dog?” she asked, watching the surface of the stew roil, barley bubbling up and sinking back into the broth like little white fingers disappearing into the clay vats below.

Enola’s voice was suddenly uncertain. “The great black dog he was playing with, outside. I thought…perhaps it belongs to one of the workmen? A neighbour?”

Lucille frowned to herself as she gave the stew a stir, before turning to face Enola with her blandest smile. “I think not. There are no neighbours for miles.”

Enola was white as a sheet, Lucille noticed. Her lips were stained red from within – so she had begun to cough blood. Before long, she would be too weak to wander about and surprise Lucille like this. Lucille found herself looking forward to it, even as she felt a little pang of regret. Soon, soon enough, Allerdale would be truly hers again.

And so would Thomas.

Enola licked her lips before speaking, and her voice came out very dry, and a little faint, as though she had had a shock. “Perhaps one of the workmen, then.”

“Perhaps,” Lucille agreed, turning back to the stew. “I shall ask them to keep it home, if it distresses you so. And it does not seem wise or safe to have an animal underfoot around so much machinery.”

“No,” Enola murmured, as though speaking to no one present. “Neither wise nor safe at all.”

…

As she realised that her gamble had not paid off and that Lucille by no means intended to spare her, Enola had bargained desperately with the same skills that had led her to suspect poison. Perhaps she had hoped to save her own life by saying she could save the misshapen child’s. Perhaps she only wished to buy herself a little more time.

But she promised.

And she lied.

She _lied_.

Lucille killed her for that, one swift stabbing blow between the ribs, but it brought little satisfaction. Enola had been much weakened by then, by the poison. She hardly even fought back.

…

Lucille committed the little corpse to the clay along with Enola’s earthly remains, and tried not to notice the way Thomas looked at her.

She tried not to remember that it was Thomas who had suggested poison. Who had, all those years ago, first brought Pamela Upton to Crimson Peak.

Lucille did not like to think upon it too long. There was something in the thought that disquieted her. Made her think about the cogs in Thomas’ clockwork contraptions, ticking along somewhere hidden inside the mechanism. A thousand tiny unseen pieces, intricately interlocked and deliberately, carefully positioned, to make something happen which on the surface appeared to occur, quite marvellously, all on its own.

She did not like to think of that perfect, delicate, innocent little boy she had once known, who cried when Lucille crushed a moth against the wall or pinned one to pull off its wings, sitting down and thinking of the best way to dispatch his blameless young wife. Thinking of ways to save his home and his future, and deciding on _this._ There was something about it which saddened and frightened her.

And yet, there was something about it which excited her, too.

Perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps it was she who had inherited their father’s cruel temper, he their mother’s sly malice. Thomas always had devised the best toys and games for her, after all.

Lucille did not like to think on it. And yet, somehow, she could think of little else.

…

And now, they are in America. And once more, everything has turned upside down.

Lucille had been angry when Thomas had come in to the ball – thrown in their favour! – late, and with a woman not their mark on his arm. As time had passed and she had delicately probed further, finding out more about this Edith Cushing, she had come to appreciate the wisdom of his choice. Eunice McMichael was rich, true, and her mother a widow, but her family was well-positioned socially and there was an unexpected brother to contend with, a brother who would no doubt be the heir.

Besides which, Lucille could not long have endured Eunice’s condescending, sniping sweetness. Though it would have been a great pleasure to slowly poison her, Lucille thinks she likely would have become impatient and bashed Eunice’s brains in. Possibly before they even reached home.

But Edith – Edith is different.

Edith’s money is newer, she and her father still not quite acceptable to the circles of society their wealth should afford them access too, yet seen as a little too snobbish for the sort of circles they must have come from. And Edith has only her father in the world, and he her. Easy ties to sever.

Edith is younger – too young, as Lucille had tried to protest, too delicate, and in the strangest way a surge of the same protective feeling she has always felt for Thomas nearly chokes her when she looks on Edith’s golden hair in the sunlight – and not well-travelled, inexperienced in the ways of the world. Edith is susceptible to flattery.

And she is a romantic, a writer of lurid gothic fictions, someone already half in love with darkness. From all their conversations, Lucille senses no fear, no apprehension, in her. Edith would go willingly wherever Thomas and Lucille led her. Even to her own death.

Edith is as fragile and delicate as a butterfly, a beautiful thing that should wither and die so easily in the cold austerity of Allerdale Hall. And yet, the way she speaks to Lucille, as though nothing Lucille says or does can unsettle her, as though she already regards Lucille as she would an old friend…

_This one would be easy to fall in love with,_ Lucille thinks.

And, looking to Thomas, is suddenly, coldly, afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> Unless the internet has lied to me, Pamela is correct in identifying a bird flying through a house as an omen of death in English superstition. I chose a raven for dramatic flair.
> 
> The _nigheag_, or _bean nighe_, is a Scottish sister to the _bean sidhe_, better known on this side of the pond as the banshee. She is most often found at ponds or fords in streams, washing out shrouds or death-clothes of those who are about to die.
> 
> Again, unless the internet is lying to me, in Italian folklore it is very bad luck to lay a hat on a bed, because it portends a death.
> 
> And finally, the Black Dog is an English death omen, and is sometimes also considered a psychopomp and a protector of churchyards.


End file.
